Sketching on the Run, and Always Thinking

Another Quick Watercolor Sketch

I’ll take weeks out doing drawings, watercolor studies, I may never use. I’ll throw them in a backroom, never look at them again or drop them on the floor and walk over them. But I feel that the communion that has seeped into the subconscious will eventually come out in the final picture.

Andrew Wyeth

I’ve been reaping a whirlwind the past few days. My two schools are hurtling toward the close of the fall term with all its craziness. Holidays are drawing nearer, temperatures have plummeted, and my afternoon/evening engagements seem to be increasing of late. In the midst of all this, I still find the quiet center for art. I sketch daily, either in charcoal or watercolor. The one posted above was begun last evening at the Trinity Aritsts Guild gallery in Bedford, Texas. Several of us gathered to paint, chat and enjoy one another’s company. Following the ninety-minute sketching time, I was privleged to have a late dinner with more meaningful conversation. All of the ideas exchanged last night, combined with the time making art, awoke me in the morning darkness, long before the alarm was to go off. My mind was surging with ideas, all of them good. I have good friends to thank for those mental resources.

School today is on a Pep Rally schedule and the football playoffs are underway. Everyone’s mind seems to be on everything except education. So . . . I have pushed my art history students into another day to study Andrew Wyeth’s work, and I pause for a moment between classes to photograph last night’s sketch that I’ve had on my desk before me all morning. This is turning out to be an excellent day for rumination, reflection and recording. My journal is filling up, and I am in the mood to start another sketch. With each successive sketch, I feel myself getting closer and closer to beginning the large still life composition that still waits patiently in the dim recesses of my garage studio.